Ian McEwan - Solar

So he made the poorest choice of all. Barely a choice, more a kind of instinctual funk. Without quite cutting loose, he had kept his distance – he was working abroad anyway. He had seen other women, and all the while half hoped for and wholly dreaded the call she would make to tell him of the eager, talented buck prowling at the peripheries of her existence, about to make, or having just made, an entrance. And then, if he was weak enough, he would hurry back to defend what he would suddenly decide was his, and she would be grateful, the buck would be dispatched (the buck stops here!), the mess would remain, and he would be one step nearer the wrong decision.

He put away the palmtop, leaned back in his seat and half closed his eyes. Right before him on the table, shimmering through his barely parted lashes, were the salt and vinegar crisps, and just beyond the packet was a plastic bottle of mineral water belonging to the young man. Beard wondered whether he should be looking over the notes for his speech, but general travel fatigue as well as the lunchtime drinks had rendered him, for the moment, inert, and he believed he knew the material well enough, and on a card in his top pocket were various useful quotes. As for the snack, he wanted it less than he did, but he still wanted it. Certain of those industrial compounds might stir his metabolism into wakefulness. It was his palate, rather than his stomach, that was looking forward to the acidic tang of the dust coating each brittle slice. He had shown decent restraint – the train had been moving for several minutes now – and there was no good reason to hold back.

He pulled himself up in his seat and leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands propping his chin for several reflective seconds, gaze fixed on the gaudy wrapper, silver, red and blue, with cartoon animals cavorting below a Union Jack. So childish of him, this infatuation, so weak, so harmful, a microcosm of all past errors and folly, of that impatient way he had of having to have what he wanted instantly. He took the bag in both hands and pulled its neck apart, discharging a clammy fragrance of frying fat and vinegar. It was an artful laboratory simulation of the corner fish and chip shop, an enactment of fond memories and desire and nationhood. That flag was a considered choice. He lifted clear a single crisp between forefinger and thumb, replaced the bag on the table, and sat back. He was a man to take his pleasures seriously. The trick was to set the fragment on the centre of the tongue and, after a moment's spreading sensation, push the potato up hard to shatter against the roof of the mouth. His theory was that the rigid irregular surface caused tiny abrasions in the soft flesh into which salt and chemicals poured, creating a mild and distinctive pleasure-pain.

Like a master of wine at a grand tasting, he had closed his eyes. When he opened them he was staring into the level grey-blue gaze of the man opposite. Feeling only slightly ashamed, Beard made a gesture of impatience and looked away. He knew how he must have appeared, a plump fool of a certain age communing intensely with a morsel of junk food. He had been behaving as though alone. So what? As long as he harmed or offended no one, that was his right. He no longer cared much what others thought of him. There were few benefits in growing older, and this was one. In a simple assertion of selfhood, rather than to satisfy his contemptible needs, he put out a hand to take another crisp, and as he did so, met again the other man's stare. It was narrow, hard, unblinking, expressive of little beyond a ferocious curiosity. It occurred to Beard that he might be sitting across from a psychopath. So be it. He could be a bit of one himself. The salty residue from the first round gave him the impression that he was bleeding from the gums. He slumped back in his seat, opened his mouth and repeated the experience, although this time he kept his eyes open. Inevitably, the second crisp was less piquant, less surprising, less penetrating than the first, and it was precisely this shortfall, this sensual disappointment, that prompted the need, familiar to drug addicts, to increase the dose. He would eat two crisps at once.

It was at this moment, as he glanced up, that he witnessed his fellow passenger sitting forward, gaze still eerily fixed, elbows on the table, perhaps in conscious parody. Then, letting one forearm drop, crane-like down onto the bag, the man stole a crisp, probably the largest in the packet, held it in front of his face for a second or two, then ate it, not with Beard's fastidiousness, but with an insolent chewing motion, with lips parted so that one could glimpse it turning to paste on his tongue. The man did not even blink, his stare was so intense. And the act was so flagrant, so unorthodox, that even Beard, who was quite capable of unconventional thought – how else had he won his Prize? – could only sit in frozen shock and try, for dignity's sake, by remaining expressionless, to betray no sign of emotion.

The two men were locked into each other's gaze, and now Beard was determined not to look away. No question, the man's behaviour was aggressive, the act was naked theft, however trivial the goods. And if it came to physical struggle, Beard did not doubt that he would be on the floor in seconds, with broken arms or head. But there was also a possibility of another element, of something playful behind this steeliness and mockery of an older man's ridiculous pleasure in junk food. Or a tease, in the old-fashioned situationist mode, of a stuffy bourgeois. Or worse, the fellow believed that Beard was gay, and this was a come-on, a kind of modern opening known only to certain subgroups for whom his purple silk tie, as a hypothesis, was an accidental signal, an open invitation to seduction. Wasn't an earring in one ear or the other, he had forgotten which, once a significant marker of sexual orientation? This man had two earrings in each ear. The physicist knew much about light, but about forms of public expression in contemporary culture he was in the dark. Finally, returning to his initial surmise, Beard continued to wonder if his fellow passenger was a psychiatric case on an unlicensed drug holiday from the lithium, in which case it was a bad idea to continue to stare into his eyes. At this, Beard looked away and did the only thing that came to mind. He took another crisp.

What did he expect? As soon as this crisp was on Beard's tongue, the man's hand dropped again, and this time he took two, just as Beard himself had intended, and ate them in the same jaunty, vulgar manner. It would surely not be a good move to snatch the bag away from the table – too physical, too abrupt. Dangerous, to be breaking new ground, inviting a scuffle. Would anyone save him if it came to that? Beard glanced around the compartment. Passengers were reading, or staring numb-faced into space, or out the window at the wintry west-London suburbs, oblivious to the drama. What interest was there in two men silently sharing a snack? It was paradoxical, but as Beard saw it, there was more sense in continuing what had already begun. It did not occur to him to avoid confrontation with a stronger man by giving way and letting him have the bag to himself. Beard would not be bullied. He may have been short and overweight, but he had a developed sense of justice and always stood his ground. He was capable of being reckless. There had been some ruinous consequences. He took another slice of fried potato. His opponent, his stare still fixed on Beard, did the same. Then again, and again, for two further rounds, their hands came down on the bag, in steady, deliberate rather than rapid succession, and never quite touched. When there were only two crisps left, the young man retrieved the bag and, in a parody of politeness, offered them to Beard. The only response to this, the final insult, was to turn away.